


mend your soul

by hockeydyke



Series: Samwell Women's Hockey [3]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Family Fluff, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Las Vegas Aces, Underage Drinking, somewhat blatant Tyler Seguin references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 10:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13121838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hockeydyke/pseuds/hockeydyke
Summary: Jordan visits Kent in Vegas over the summer.Part of my December 2017 holiday prompt fills!





	mend your soul

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, this isn't going to make any sense unless you read put that weight on me, the first story in this series. Go look at it! It's good, I promise!

Jordan visits Las Vegas for the first time in her life the summer after her sophomore year at Samwell.

 

Kent had offered to have one of his teammates pick Jordan up from the airport once he’d realized that he would be at an interview when her flight came in. In fact, he’d planned to call up the magazine and let them know that something came up and he’d have to reschedule, but Jordan had convinced him not to do that. She’d also managed to convince him to let her just Uber to his place from the airport, although not before he’d already given her the numbers of several NHL players.

 

So here she was, arriving late in the afternoon on a weekday after a four-and-a-half hour direct flight from Rochester. Kent had offered to fly her first class and she’d refused, although she had eventually let him pay for her economy class ticket, because while she does work over the summer, that money is going straight toward her tuition, and plane tickets are expensive. 

 

All she has is her backpack and a rolling carry-on so she does her best to order an Uber while tugging her bag through the terminal and manages to only trip twice. Considering she regularly wipes out even without any distractions, this is impressive. 

 

The car ride from the airport to Kent’s house is only a little more than twenty minutes, which gives Jordan just enough time to hear all about her driver’s three daughters and try to talk him into signing them up to play hockey. As it turned out, they were more of a soccer family, but it was still a good conversation. 

 

She was standing on the curb in front of Kent’s house and waving goodbye to Damir from Uber and his Camry when another car pulled out of Kent’s driveway-- a sporty ride, driven by a blonde woman. She was the reporter getting video of Kent in his house, no doubt. She gave Jordan a fairly obvious sneer as she passed by, so Jordan flashed her a smile. It’s not like Jordan doesn’t get looks from people every day. Usually they can’t figure out her gender, and it makes them uncomfortable. Their loss. 

 

She bounds up to Kent’s front door in a few steps and tries the knob. It’s unlocked, so she strides right in. When she shuts the door she hears a wail from a distant room. 

 

“Oh, fuck off! I promised you two hours and you got two and a half! Stay out of my house!”

 

Jordan is pretty sure she’s never been in a house this big. Kent was raised in a second-floor apartment on Main Street in the town they both grew up in, but Jordan is pretty sure the kitchen she finds at the end of the hall is bigger than that entire apartment. 

 

Kent is standing in the middle of that kitchen, drinking pre-made chocolate milk directly from the carton. He’s got a ridiculously fluffy cat perched on his shoulders. 

 

“Jesus, Kenny. You want you favorite cousin to stay out of your house? That’s cold.”

 

“Jordan!” Kent’s shout startles the cat and she gives a disgruntled  _ mrrp  _ before hopping off of Kent’s shoulders and onto the counter. Kent moves in for a hug and Jordan ducks neatly under his arm--thanks, agility practices-- so she can give the cat a few scratches behind the ears. When she glances back at Kent he looks pitiful, arms open and empty, so she tackles him to the ground. 

 

“Fucking hell,” he says, once his face is pressed against the hardwood. “Don’t break me! This body brings me all the money!” 

 

Jordan laughs at him while she rolls off of him. “Please, you could get a desk job if you needed. Or just do more interviews. Or house tours, apparently?”

 

“Never again,” Kent says as he slowly gets to his feet, knees creaking slightly. “That was awful. Like, I get that it’s her job to figure out shit about me, but she really didn’t have to spend half the time trying to set me up with her sister.”

 

Jordan gives Kent a requisite laugh in response, but she does wonder-- does Kent know that she knows he’s gay? He never explicitly came out to her. Sexuality is almost always an unspoken secret in their family, as if they never managed to move on from don’t ask, don’t tell, but she figures they should be able to talk about it, from one gay cousin to another.

 

That can wait, though. They have an entire week to get caught up. That’s more time she’s spent with him since she was in middle school. For now, she’s going to concentrate on more pressing matters, like finding something edible to snack on. Airline pretzels had done very little to sate her hunger. 

 

Kent’s busy putting away his milk carton into the fridge, so Jordan wanders into the nearest open doorway and finds herself not in a pantry but rather an entire small room filled floor to ceiling with alcohol of various types. She’s not super familiar with the finer points of booze consumption, but she’s pretty sure that some of this stuff isn’t even legal in the United States. 

 

She emerges a minute later with a bottle of some flavored Smirnoff. “I didn’t realize that you had your very own liquor store,” she says, setting it on the counter before looking to see if Kent has any juice in the fridge to use as a mixer.

 

“Oh my god,” says Kent. “You’re definitely underage. Your mom would kill me if she knew I was letting you drink.”

 

“Oh, you’ve already decided that you’re letting me? Cool.” Jordan pours herself a glass of vodka and orange juice and hopes it doesn’t taste too bad, because there’s no way she’s looking like an amateur in front of Kent. “Anyway, she knows I drink at school. I live in a team house. It’s pretty obvious.”

 

Kent still looks pretty shook up over it. “Sorry, I guess I’m just not used to seeing my  _ baby cousin  _ acting like an adult.”

 

Jordan could point out that drinking a screwdriver before dinnertime probably isn’t very adult, but instead, she just says, “I am an adult.”

 

“Yeah,” Kent says, voice filled with something like regret. “I guess you are.”

 

They’re quiet for a second. The cat reappears from wherever it had skittered off to and curls itself around Kent’s ankles. He still looks pretty pitiful, though, so Jordan offers him the bottle. He takes a swig and grimaces. “Fucking college student. I have every vodka option known to humankind, and you still go for cheap Smirnoff.”

 

Jordan smirks at him, then picks up her glass and the cat. “Come on. Give me the full house tour. Show me all the stupid rich people stuff you own.”

 

Kent grins. “Alright. You’re going to love my Roomba.” He takes off toward the next room, already talking a mile a minute about the vacuum. 

 

Jordan gets just a second to stay in the kitchen, and she spends it glancing back at the liquor cabinet and frowning. Her phone buzzes in her pocket-- Celeste checking in on her after her flight, most likely, and it reminds her that she’s pretty glad she has the numbers of a few of Kent’s teammates now. She’s got some texting to do. 

 

But for now-- she’s got a cousin to get caught up with, and a Roomba to see, so she’ll worry about the rest later.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Photograph by Ed Sheeran. 
> 
> So the Parson-Kelly family bonding is beginning! Baby steps. They'll get less awkward about this eventually. Maybe they'll even..... grow as people and become slightly more functional adults! Also: the interview is highkey based of the Tyler Seguin house tour, if you didn't pick that up. It's because Kent and Seguin are both trashy white boys who get more attention than they deserve!
> 
> Comments are appreciated, or you can come talk/chill over on tumblr where I'm @hockeydyke!


End file.
